Wile Versus Guile

It was a mouse by virtue of which Ephraim Tutt had leaped into fame. It is true that other characters famous in song and story-particularly in “Mother Goose”-have similarly owed their celebrity in whole or part to rodents, but there is, it is submitted, no other case of a mouse, as mouse per se, reported in the annals of the law, except Tutt's mouse, from Doomsday Book down to the present time.

Yet it is doubtful whether without his mouse Ephraim Tutt would ever have been heard of at all, and same would equally have been true if when pursued by the chef's gray cat the mouse aforesaid had jumped in another direction. But as luck would have it, said mouse leaped foolishly into an open casserole upon a stove in the kitchen of the Comers Hotel, and Mr. Tutt became in his way a leader of the bar.

It is quite true that the tragic end of the mouse in question has nothing to do with our present narrative except as a side light upon the vagaries of the legal career, but it illustrates how an attorney if he expects to succeed in his profession, must be ready for anything that comes along-even if it be a mouse.

The two Tutts composing the firm of Tutt &Tutt were both, at the time of the mouse case, comparatively young men. Tutt was a native of Bangor, Maine, and numbered among his childhood friends one Newbegin, a commercial wayfarer in the shingle and clapboard line; and as he hoped at some future time to draw Newbegin's will or to incorporate for him some business venture Tutt made a practise of entertaining his prospective client at dinner upon his various visits to the metropolis, first at one New York hostelry and then at another.

Chance led them one night to the Comers, and there amid the imitation palms and imitation French waiters of the imitation French restaurant Tutt invited his friend Newbegin to select what dish he chose from those upon the bill of fare; and Newbegin chose kidney stew. It was at about that moment that the adventure which has been referred to occurred in the hotel kitchen. The gray cat was cheated of its prey, and in due course the casserole containing the stew was borne into the dining room and the dish was served.

Suddenly Mr. Newbegin contorted his mouth and exclaimed:

“Heck! A mouse!”

It was. The head waiter was summoned, the manager, the owner. Guests and garcons crowded about Tutt and Mr. Newbegin to inspect what had so unexpectedly been found. No one could deny that it was, mouse-cooked mouse; and Newbegin had ordered kidney stew. Then Tutt had had his inspiration.

“You shall pay well for this!” he cried, frowning at the distressed proprietor, while Newbegin leaned piteously against a papier-mache pillar. “This is an outrage! You shall be held liable in heavy damages for my client's indigestion!”

And thus Tutt &Tutt got their first case out of Newbegin, for under the influence of the eloquence of Mr. Tutt a jury was induced to give him a verdict of one thousand dollars against the Comers Hotel, which the Court of Appeals sustained in the following words, quoting verbatim from the learned brief furnished by Tutt &Tutt, Ephraim Tutt of counsel:

“The only legal question in the case, or so it appears to us, is whether there is such a sale of food to a guest on the part of the proprietor as will sustain a warranty. If we are not in error, however, the law is settled and has been since the reign of Henry the Sixth. In the Ninth Year Book of that Monarch's reign there is a case in which it was held that 'if I go to a tavern to eat, and the taverner gives and sells me meat and it corrupted, whereby I am made very sick, action lies against him without any express warranty, for there is a warranty in law'; and in the time of Henry the Seventh the learned Justice Keilway said, 'No man can justify selling corrupt victual, but an action on the case lies against the seller, whether the victual was warranted to be good or not.' Now, certainly, whether mouse meat be or be not deleterious to health a guest at a hotel who orders a portion of kidney stew has the right to expect, and the hotel keeper impliedly warrants, that such dish will contain no ingredients beyond those ordinarily placed therein.”

“A thousand dollars!” exulted Tutt when the verdict was rendered. “Why, anyone would eat mouse for a thousand dollars!”

The Comers Hotel became in due course a client of Tutt &Tutt, and the mouse which made Mr. Tutt famous did not die in vain, for the case became celebrated throughout the length and breadth of the land, to the glory of the firm and a vast improvement in the culinary conditions existing in hotels.

“Come in, Mr. Barrows! Come right in! I haven't seen you for-well, how long is it?” exclaimed Mr. Tutt, extending a long welcoming arm toward a human scarecrow upon the threshold.

“Five years,” answered the visitor. “I only got out day before yesterday. Fourteen months off for good behavior.”

He coughed and put down carefully beside him a large dress-suit case marked E.V.B., Pottsville, N.Y.

“Well, well!” sighed Mr. Tutt. “So it is. How time flies!”

“Not in Sing Sing!” replied Mr. Barrows ruefully.

“I suppose not. Still, it must feel good to be out!”

Mr. Barrows made no reply but dusted off his felt hat. He was but the shadow of a man, an old man at that, as was attested by his long gray beard, his faded blue eyes, and the thin white hair about his fine domelike forehead.

“I forget what your trouble was about,” said Mr. Tutt gently. “Won't you have a stogy?”

Mr. Barrows shook his head.

“I ain't used to it,” he answered. “Makes me cough.” He gazed about him vaguely.

“Something about bonds, wasn't it?” asked Mr. Tutt.

“Yes,” replied Mr. Barrows; “Great Lakes and Canadian Southern.”

“Of course! Of course!”

“A wonderful property,” murmured Mr. Barrows regretfully. “The bonds were perfectly good. There was a defect in the foreclosure proceedings which made them a permanent underlying security of the reorganized company-under The Northern Pacific R.R. Co. vs. Boyd; you know-but the court refused to hold that way. They never will hold the way you want, will they?” He looked innocently at Mr. Tutt.

“No,” agreed the latter with conviction, “they never will!”

“Now those bonds were as good as gold,” went on the old man; “and yet they said I had to go to prison. You know all about it. You were my lawyer.”

“Yes,” assented Mr. Tutt, “I remember all about it now.”

Indeed it had all come back to him with the vividness of a landscape seen during a lightning flash-the crowded court, old Doc Barrows upon the witness stand, charged with getting money on the strength of defaulted and outlawed bonds-picked up heaven knows where-pathetically trying to persuade an unsympathetic court that for some reason they were still worth their face value, though the mortgage securing the debt which they represented had long since been foreclosed and the money distributed.

“I'd paid for 'em-actual cash,” he rambled on. “Not much, to be sure-but real money. If I got 'em cheap that was my good luck, wasn't it? It was because my brain was sharper than other folks'! I said they had value and I say so now-only nobody will believe it or take the trouble to find out. I learned a lot up there in Sing Sing too,” he continued, warming to his subject. “Do you know, sir, there are fortunes lying all about us? Take gold, for instance! There's a fraction of a grain in every ton of sea water. But the big people don't want it taken out because it would depress the standard of exchange. I say it's a conspiracy-and yet they jailed a man for it! There's great mineral deposits all about just waiting for the right man to come along and develop 'em.”